By Nicole Thomas
The Mississippi Department of Education has released state test scores from the Mississippi Curriculum Test 2 (MCT 2) and the Subject Area Testing Program (SATP) for the 2013-2014 school year.
SSD saw its biggest gains in fifth and eighth grade science where 67 percent of students scored proficient or advanced in fifth grade while 66 percent of students scored similarly in eighth grade. The scores represent gains of 11 and 14 percent respectively over 2012-13 results.
SSD’s elementary students also increased scores in language arts for the third year in a row with 57 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced in 2014.
“I continue to be impressed with our teachers’ hard work and their students’ results in an ever-changing educational environment,” Supt. Lewis Holloway said. “There are areas identified where we need to increase efforts and realign resources to provide additional support, and we have a plan to do that.”
While SSD has been more effective moving its lowest scoring students from minimal to basic, our District continues to struggle to find effective tools to help more students improve from basic to proficient from one year to the next.
“SSD’s teachers and students are holding their own in the face of higher standards, but we are not yet gaining as much ground between these two categories of basic to proficient as needed,” SSD Assistant Superintendent Jody Woodrum explained.
Under Mississippi’s new accountability model, a district’s ability to help its lowest performing students meet their growth goal significantly impacts its accountability rating as the new model counts this group of students twice. The scores from the MCT2 and the SATP will be used to calculate SSD’s accountability rating although Mississippi schools were granted an accountability waiver for the 2013-14 school year as districts shifted their teaching focus to Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
As Mississippi’s testing model changes and evolves to reflect the adoption of CCSS, the Starkville School District continues to evaluate data with each new assessment to move toward our high standards of achievement as well as meet the state’s new criteria.
“One of SSD’s goals for this year will be to drill down to specifics and come up with additional, out-of-the-box strategies to focus and improve in the critical areas of growth,” Woodrum added. “We are on the right track.”